TELEPHONEBOOKS

People want to lead an unusual and special life.

Very few are able to do that. Education once seemed to be the key to success, a good chance to change from a nobody to someone. But since in modern civilizations education is now available for everyone (real and on the Internet), you can't do anything with a normal education as you could do a hundred years ago with an ordinary training of a worker. Anyone who wants to lead a special, exciting and unusual life goes to extremes. And maybe, or if I talk about it that way, it has always been that way. By extremes, I mean continuous learning in a particular discipline to bring it to mastery. Most people in my environment are ordinary people who are neither particularly masterful nor particularly bad in their professions or other activities. Including me. I am an ordinary standard in terms of my education and activities.

I even think that my excellent education in many parts was throwing pearls at sows, because what I learned in terms of legal understanding and business skills was basically not needed for the profession in which I completed my education. I observed that the finished trainees were no longer employed in exactly the areas for which they had learned to apply the many legal principles, and it was also noticed in the companies themselves that it was quite sufficient for the front desk employees to go through a fast phase of the training period and not to invest any three-year training at all. More than three-quarters of the knowledge I have acquired I have never been able to apply. That should make you think.

Which I don't mean to say at all that I would have wanted it otherwise. In fact, the training has benefited me in a completely different way, not only at the desk in the office, but in life itself. But I didn't know that at the time.

I'm not quite sure whether I'm misperceived when I call anywhere these days, but I have the impression that people's competence has declined considerably. But unlike before, I have matured and become older. When I called a company in the 90s, I had the impression that older people on the phone were advising or informing me. If I call anywhere today, I am the older one. Recently I said to one of my coachlings: "No matter where I pick up the phone and need information from someone, in about eighty percent of the cases I don't get it. It is delegated somewhere else, but I don't get any satisfactory information from there either." I asked myself the question: is this due to the lower level of education? But perhaps the era of telephoning is also over? Or people don't want to commit themselves to anything more by telephone? Or those who still answer the phone in a company are poorly educated anyway? Or are the experts hiding behind the front desk staff and only speaking with other experts?

There is indeed a difference whether I call somewhere as a customer, as a service provider or in the position of a colleague. For all those who want free information or information outside a standard, I would say that they have to learn to live with the fact that such information is in danger of extinction because everyone refers you to the Internet or their homepages. But such a homepage can be incredibly patient, to put it nicely.

With all the talk about flat hierarchies in modern offices,

I can't help feeling that the hierarchies are just as pronounced as they have always been. The interlocutors never seem to be able to decide anything for themselves and inquiries have to be forwarded to some supervisors. Nobody seems to want to lean out of the window, the responsibility is gladly given away. For me, this creates the overall impression that true competence is hidden.

Even though I said that I had never used about three quarters of my training content, this is not really true. That which resonates in the background and is present in knowledge eludes a one-to-one interpretation, but nevertheless has an effect on the nature of my work. I do not share the widespread criticism that what has been learned is often superfluous. For me this is too straightforward in my way of thinking and I would say that all knowledge that I have ever acquired, in one form or another, breaks its ground over the years, often I am not even aware of it. Of course, you have to distinguish between expertise that can and does become outdated and what people learn about communication. Technical skills don't help me if I don't keep them up to date, as the world keeps turning and innovations are entering the market everywhere.

Knowledge, which one acquires by studying at university or by a classical company training, is valuable knowledge, not necessarily because it is of a factual nature, but because the process of knowledge transfer itself is bound to the people who participate in it. Facts change everywhere, but not what goes beyond facts and the recognition that learning is a lifelong prerequisite.

Indirect learning

The very target-oriented striving to specialise and standardize the transfer of knowledge, to design learning content internationally, harbours the danger that extensive and indirect learning is neglected. Something like fun projects and learning content dedicated to idleness have little place in exams. The most fun things in particular are not included in the grades or examination procedures.

When I worked for a few months at a design school in the office, I remember that the students' final works were under a lot of pressure and that neither teachers nor students looked as if they enjoyed their respective jobs. How different was the experience I had as a PR consultant with the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, where I accompanied a creative project with the professor of statics and the students. One of our PR clients, a telephone book publisher, entrusted us with the public relations work for their products.

Can you imagine anything more boring than phone books?

The challenge was to put this product in an interesting context.

That's why our team came up with the idea of using telephone books to create buildings or works of art. We initiated the cooperation with the university and to our surprise the head of public relations reacted very positively to our suggestion to commission the students with a project. The idea of integrating the whole thing into the annual exhibition came immediately. The first semester students were given this task and had to come up with their own static ideas. At that time we rented a room where we had our client deliver telephone books by the ton. I visited the students in good time and documented the progress with photos. The whole thing we made more difficult by a condition: the students were not allowed to use any glue and also no other aids, except paper clips.

^{"We have moved
25000 telephone books (23,000 tons)
towers
cupolas
bridges
hanging roofs
tension straps
temple
boats
a 40-ton truck
1 kg paperclips
twelve props
a case of beer
the art and culture office "Fundbüro" (lost property office)"}

^{Prof. Dr. Michael Staffa / University of Fine Arts, Department of Architecture}

To my delight the students went to work with great zeal and came out with countless designs and ideas.

The amount of material helped, of course, because experiments and mistakes could take place. I saw how constructions were created before my eyes, the students had formed into smaller groups and had each devised a project. I was able to watch some of them building a wooden formwork for an arched bridge and then starting to stack the phone books together and develop a plug technique that should give strength. The most exciting moment was when the wooden boarding was pulled out and we all held our breath to see if the bridge would hold by itself. During the first attempts everything collapsed!

After a while, however, the students had identified the weak points and gradually improved the construction. A few days before the exhibition they were successful and the bridge stood proud and solid in front of us. A whole eight meters long! You could even walk on it safely. This project received the best space in the whole university, namely in the spacious old entrance area of the building, where every visitor was immediately taken by it. One could see a suspension bridge swinging high above, on the right side the students erected a Greek acropolis and the vandalism, which broke through overnight from some cheeky visitors, had collapsed a part of the columns, so that the temple now looked even more realistic, just like a ruin. One could marvel at an igloo, even a boat, one had built a seating group for a comfortable stay with an integrated screen and many other works of art from the telephone books for viewing.

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^{"The "Telefonbuchbau" competition was organized by the marketing group "Das Telefonbuch der Telekom und der HfbK". The aim was to design and erect supporting structures from telephone directories alone.}

^{Evaluation of the work:
1st prize: 1000 DM (Deutsche Mark) - tension strap bridge
2nd prize: 800 DM - arch bridge
3rd prize: 700 DM - mat, ladder and swing
4th prize: 500 DM - temple}

^{Tension strap bridge: The suspended belt itself must transmit the forces resulting from its own weight and any superimposed stresses to the abutments. The occurring forces load the belt in tension. This tensile force, which corresponds to approximately 40 kg for our telephone book band, must be absorbed both by the book connections and by the spines of the books. It has turned out that the friction force between the pages is so great due to the large number of contact surfaces that it is not only difficult to separate the connection of two books folded into each other, but it is also easy to absorb and transfer the dead weight of a 16-metre book volume. The weakest link in the telephone band was the glue binding of the spine, which loosens at about 60 kilograms and thus determines the maximum tensile load of a telephone book strap.}

^{Judging by the jury:
A modest and filigree construction whose size lies in its simplicity, but which only appears simple. Actually a high-tech construction with elaborate interweaving and the almost symbolic paper clip. If they are removed, the building collapses. The lightness that would not have been expected of a telephone book appears."}

^{source: Booklet published by Prof. Dr. Ing. Staffa / HfbK}

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What a successful project. Where all the winners were: The students, the university, our PR agency and our client, for whom there was a really good PR coverage, because we invited the entire available press to the event and many also came because of the good picture material. Our client was highly satisfied with the way we presented their product. Of course, all this had nothing to do with the phone book itself. The ads that a telephone book publisher sells to make its sales may never have reached advertisers, but that's not what public relations is all about. If you want to sell ads and get attention for your product, you need good and fun ideas and implementations. A company wants people to talk about the company, it wants to appear in a good light.

I don't think much of it when companies take on charity projects or suddenly appear in the press as environmentalists, unless there is a real intention to do something for the environment. In fact, you can come up with ideas with discarded books. For example, to build the walls of a house from it and plaster the outside with clay. In fact, books would not be the worst building material, as they have good static properties and a certain flexibility and on the other hand high stability.

The combination of fun and utility is one that I really appreciate.

Creative streams are released in such processes, a form of joyful collaboration that inspires me. Learning is an accompanying effect and not necessarily the strictly targeted goal. How much the students have learned about statics, how little it will have bothered them to suddenly have to deal with formulas that they would probably have found boring in theory! People are problem solvers by nature, not because a problem seems disturbing and ugly to them, but because it is fascinating.

Now this project is many years ago and I ask myself: is one of the participating students today in a professional position where the memory of this task has helped him? How does this person live, where did it bring him to have such an experience? Did it have a great influence? How will this person himself serve as a role model, how will he deal with young people and trainees?

Back to the exciting life.

This project has neither an international nor particularly outstanding significance in the context of the difficulties of human civilizations and architectures. Nevertheless, I think it has significance for the individual. It has been one experience among many for all who have witnessed the project. It is also clear that neither all people nor at all times are able to enjoy their education or profession. What makes it special is that it is an exception. In contrast to routine and less interesting tasks. I also don't believe that all people take advantage of the same opportunities and will ever have them.

People do everything "right" and still fail to succeed. I often meet people - naturally due to my work - who classify much of what they touch as failure or setback. They don't succeed in what other people succeed in. Although there are no big differences in abilities and possibilities. In reality, however, it is probably because bad experiences make people discouraged and angry.

One often speaks politically correctly of the fact that all people deserve equal treatment. And although I don't deny that, I also think that people simply shouldn't stick to it and shouldn't make it a rigorous rule. I have noticed that different treatment of people is due to their differences. And if I treated everyone equally, I would not do justice to their differences. I prefer some and disadvantage others. Positive people often have it easier in life. This may bother one and make one angry, but who doesn't like to be with someone who radiates clarity and contentment?

But how do you stay positive? I think it's the things you do for fun. This term is very misleading and I don't understand fun to be being entertained and to remain in a taking - i.e. consuming - attitude. Life is much more enjoyable when I am in a creating and constructive action than when I am in a consuming one. But let's not kid ourselves. The majority is and remains in consumption. There is no place in the whole world for all builders and creators, for designers and explorers, for exceptions.

The gnawing dissatisfaction that comes from time to time with many of us and for which we like to find culprits has little to do with anyone being to blame. Admitting that one's own life is rather ordinary, shaped by a few outstanding events may be painful at first, but if you are honest, there are always others who are far more talented and fascinating than you are. I would think you're doing well if you get a little bit of inspiration from what others do to enrich the public and try to sweeten your everyday life with it instead of wanting to become famous, rich and well-known yourself.

To be good, but still not good enough for an entry in history: that really isn't worth a headache.

The ego is offended when confronted with its own ordinariness. We all want to be praised, are sometimes like unripe fruits, which want to be applauded for their sweetness, although the degree of maturity is not reached. In the search for great meaning, we forget the small meaningful events that, while little really interest other people or knock them off their feet, could very well receive appropriate recognition in our own lives.

Ordinary life is perhaps the most underestimated and praised.

How much more difficult is it to become a master and a professional, and how many dissatisfied comrades-in-arms, envious people, neglected relatives, and children will emerge? How much health is sacrificed for a truly great goal? How many hours of laborious discipline and work are also longingly sacrificed by those who appear outstanding? Not everyone can be said to inspire and infect. Ambition often leads to success, but it is another form than the one we really admire.

In my life I have tried to keep it that way and I have been mostly consistent in not working too much and giving myself enough time for fun and leisure. It was not always possible to avoid stress. A compliment to me from a former work colleague at the time was: "How can it be that every evening you leave work on time?"

At the end you see a photo, from the time, maybe one or two years before the project. But my appearance didn't change much back then.

^{The working me, smoking in the office!}

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Photos: erh.germany